+ KELLY AND VAL ARE GOING TO THE FINALS!!!! Seriously, this is brilliant news to wake up to on a dark Wednesday morning! I have absolutely no doubt that Golden Boy is going to win another mirrorball trophy, but I would love to see either Kelly/Val or Melissa/Tony cause a huge upset next week....

+ I've started watching some soaps on YT again.... GH is really kicking ass and taking names these sweeps, AJ's return has really impressed me and it feels like a soap again, if that makes any sense at all! Am DREADING watching yesterday's clips though - seeing the gifsets on tumblr have already made me teary!

+ Greg Vaughan started on Days of our Lives last week, so I've been YTing his scenes as well - I've mostly given up on Days, because as a fan of Jack Devereaux and Matt Ashford, there are really only so many times you can watch your favourite character be killed off. (I can't believe I just typed that sentence....) But I like what I've seen of his Eric so far, and the sibling chemistry he has with Ali Sweeney was nothing short of adorable. Unfortunately, they're telegraphing the story like crazy - if this isn't Days take on The Thorn Birds, I'll eat my hat! (Though I did love Meggie and Father Ralph!!)

+ Have been listening to "Just a Fool", the Blake Shelton - Christina Aguilera duet on repeat since last week because it's so damn good, delighted to see them perform it on The Voice this week! You all need to listen to this one!

Because leobrat posted another vid of theirs in her last post, I hit YT to find this and figured I'd post it here so we could all relive the sheer perfection that was Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov......

And my favourite Blake Shelton had a great night - Male Vocalist, Song of the Year and Entertainer of the Year!!! Here's himself and Miranda accepting the award for Song of the Year - not gonna lie, I shed a tear at this one!

And because I know helsinkibaby will love this, here are Brad and Carrie opening the show (totally joining you on the I don't but if I did.... train btw). I'm also going to be singing moves like haggard from now on.... And the Gangham Style bit is one of the funniest things I've seen all year!

And editing to add in the video of Blake winning Entertainer - I love this; he didn't expect it, and neither did Miranda! I love the way she just looks at him in complete wonder and goes "You Won!" - they are such an adorable couple!!

This time, a better quality clip of the Adele & Darius Rucker duet of Need You Now that I originally posted a few weeks ago... and when I say "better", I mean Darius is featured as much as Adele in this!!

So, I've finally updated my iPhone to the latest OS - and I now remember why I loathe doing this, as it makes me anxious to the point of vomiting in case something goes wrong and my iPhone gets irretrievably effed up.

So, to calm my nerves as I wait for my apps and music to transfer over, I do what every sane person does - go on YouTube!!

From last Tuesday's DWTS, here are husband and wife professional duo Jonathan and Anna dancing a waltz they choreographed for the friend Julia, a dancer who was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. It's just gorgeous.

And from last weekend's ACM Awards, here's Miranda Lambert singing over you. No video I can find shows Blake introducing her, but his intro was lovely: "Here to perform the most important song of our lives together is the most important person in my life, Miranda Lambert Shelton.”

Speaking of Blake, here he is closing the show with Lionel Richie - You Are is one of favourite Lionel Richie songs, and I will admit to squeeing like a crazy person when I heard they'd done this as a duet!!

Finally managed to locate a working link for this..... Miranda Lambert's new video for the song "Over You"; which she wrote with her husband Balke Shelton about his brother Richie, who died in a car accident when Blake was 15.

As for the dances, I think it's obvious the judges were holding back to give 10s to Jason and Kristina - and they would have done until he totally blanked on his choreo!! Loved Chelsee & Pasha and Alex & James - Chelsee is the one I want to win at this stage, I think she's just lovely and doesn't realise how good she actually is.

As for who went - it was their time I think (being cryptic in case someone hasn't managed to see it yet!!)

Next Saturday should be interesting - Bobby has an infection in his foot and can't dance, so Brendan Cole (Rent-a-Pro!) has been drafted in to partner with Anita! He's either going to become the first pro to get booted out of Strictly twice, or he's going to keep nobbling the other pros til he gets to the final and becomes the first pro to win twice! (The banter on twitter has been great since ITT broke the news this evening) All of which means that Anita is probably not going anywhere this weekend.....

So, I was chatting to a friend on Twitter and she made the excellent point that Aliona, and indeed a large portion of the SCD viewing audience, may not actually be aware of the brilliance that is Jill's Jive.

Of course, they've heard about it from the judges and from IIT, it's SCD folklore at this stage, but they may not have actually SEEN it.

To whit, a YouTube linkapolooza!!

First off, the original jive, from Series 2 Week 3, which Bruno calls "a masterclass in jive"

Lastly, we have Jill's guest appearance during Series 6, where she and Darren came back to show them all how it's done!!

It is impossible for me to overstate how much I adore this dance - for me, it's the best SCD routine ever.

But have spoken to (surprisingly efficient) support peeps who confirmed that no we're not getting a signal and will be sending an engineer out to investigate. No-one's appeared yet, but the fact they're returning our calls is a huge tick in the Win column!

Thank goodness for my iPad (I love my daddy...) - may not be able to dl stuff but I can still surf the web and look at stuff on YouTube, which is how I wound up watching DWTS clips earlier, and I watched JR Martinez and Karina dance their rumba earlier on.

Holy moly, he made me cry. I'm actually rooting for Karina (who I do not like!) to win the MBT.

This was story week - the contestants had to pick a year that was most important to them, pick a song, and tell a story with their dance. JR and Karina danced to Tim McGraw's If You're Reading This, dedicating it to all fallen soldiers. For those of you who aren't familiar with JR's story, he was a soldier in Iraq and suffered horrific burns over 40% of his body when his humvee hit a land mine. He's had over 30 operations and skin grafts; he's since become a motivational speaker and also an actor, playing Brot Munroe on the recently cancelled All My Children.

This dance was just gorgeous - full of emotion (you could see Karina was actually sobbing for real as they started after the VT) but he just danced it so well - had lots of hip action, lovely lines - and the rumba is such a hard dance for a celeb male because they've so little to do in it! I feel the need to find screencaps and make an icon....

So, I went all retro on YouTube tonight, and it is entirely possible that the only person who gets how excited these m-vids make me is helsinkibaby - they're from the show Life Goes On, and feature Becca and Jesse (Kellie Martin and Chad Lowe), who are one of my bulletproof OTP's!!

And if anyone feels like having a real weep, one marvellous YT user has uploaded episode 4.13 "Visions" in its entirity - this is the beginning of the 5 episode arc which led to the series finale, its the one where Jesse is diagnosed with full blown AIDS. He's unable to speak to a class about AIDS, so Becca reads his speech for him, and when she's overcome and can't continue, their friend Goodman (Kiersten Warren) steps in.

Sadly, only season 1 of the show is out on DVD, which is a real shame as I'd love to see seasons 3 & 4 again! The only full ep that's on YT is "Visions" - I've found links to the finale, but it's been taken down due to a copyright claim (woe!!)

That said, I'm fairly sure helsinkibaby still has it on videotape somewhere..... we sould totally watch that sometime!! (With tissues. And wine. Lots of wine!!)

Am continuing my stroll down Memory Lane in Springfield, and just found a clip that has me dancing around my room with glee - after weeks of will they won't they UST, Dylan and Bridget FINALLY get romantic - until she tells him that she wants Peter back! Link is below (wouldn't let me embed!?) - D/B stuff starts at 5.50 mark and is quite short, follow-up doesn't seem to have been uploaded (not in descriptions anyway, but i haven't watched them yet...)

Just found this on YouTube, it's the promo for the Emmerdale fire, which airs this Thursday and sees two of the villagers perish in the inferno.

Trailer itself doesn't give much away, which is more than can be said for one of the tv listings magazines, which has published the names of the victims..... (not giving anything away, but it's exactly who I thought it would be. And there's one character who I'm very disappointed it isn't!!)

Didn't make it into work today - lots of snow this morning, and our road was extremely icy and snow-filled; my Dad struggled getting his car up the road and there's a bit of weight in his (its a Mercedes), there was no way I was trying in mine!

Possibly a good job too - was texting one of the other girls and she said it was bucketing snow most of the morning, and one of the lads just texted me to say he left site at 2.45 and had only made it as far as the shopping centre - so that's an hour and a half to do a jpurney that would take 10 minutes in normal conditions!

And it's hailstoning again.... marvellous!

To cheer myself up, I've been browsing on YouTube, and found clips of the Taylor Swift / Def Leppard CMT Crossroads, which I actually watched on Foxtel when in Oz!! Here's their version of Pour Some Sugar On Me - which is, in an word, awesome!!

So, having seen Peter from Popstars: The Rivals eliminate himself live on air all those years ago, to the wardrobe malfunctions of Lilia and Karen on Strictly Come Dancing, you'd think you'd know all about the perils of live TV, right?